Anonymous
Guest
Lore Status: Active (Week of 5/24/2021)
Note: Between 5/24 and 6/1, most of the character's in-game time will be at odd hours--and few, at that. This is simply due to a really heavy work schedule, this week, though: Due to the odd hours likely not aligning with playtimes and events, John's lore-related stuff is taking form as much-needed character bio overhauls, wiki page creation, and some creative writing. It's really fun, and added to almost daily.
Wiki plug here:
https://newdawnagn.fandom.com/wiki/John_Smith_(TV_Series)
Episode Last Seen: Season 2, Episode 3: "The Long Dark"
Locations Last Seen (Public Knowledge): Monroe
In-Character Autopilot: Due to being unavailable, in-game-wise, John's 'autopilot' mode, just for smooth-sailing in surrounding RP, is roundabouts this:
He's often in the Monroe Inn, on the second floor, researching various Monstrophism stuff--likely related to any topics conversed about, recently, which would require such. If looked for, he'd be absent. While his room and window are frequently seen lit by lantern-light, in late hours, his disappearances are seemingly at random.
New bio (WiP) can be found here:
John Smith (TV Series)
John Smith is a character in GWR's What Remains. He was introduced in Season One, Episode Six: "The Key," as a solitary inhabitant of the Northern Barrens, investigating a string of disappearances in the area. A former member of The Lake Erie Crows, John's travels as a 'Monstrophist,' or...
-----
'Maumee Algae'
Cyanobacteria, or Cyanophyta, is common in the Great Lakes—as well as Saginaw Bay and Green Bay. Often foul-smelling, it is known to discolor still waters when in bloom. Some blooms can grow rapidly, often not ceasing until October’s end. Cyanobacteria is known to impact local ecosystem health in any regard, and many variations of such harmful algal blooms are poisonous to animals and humans alike.The Maumee River, or Shawnee: Hotaawathiipi, runs from northeastern Indiana, across Ohio’s northwest, and into Lake Erie.
It is also titled Taawaawa Siipiiwi in the Algonquian Miami-Illinois language.
-Entry
-Entry
-----
(Reference List Only - Extended Compendium is an in-game resource)
Greenlight
(Location)
Little to no knowledge of 'Greenlight' exists, sans personal survivor records.
The Tides of Jotun
(Location)
Little to no knowledge of 'The Tides of Jotun' exists, sans personal survivor records.
Part the Eyes
(Methodology)
Little to no knowledge of 'Part the Eyes' exists, sans personal survivor records.
Chaw Zip
(Methodology)
Little to no knowledge of 'Chaw Zip' exists, sans personal survivor records.
The Walk
(Methodology)
Little to no knowledge of 'The Walk' exists, sans personal survivor records.
The Talk
(Vernacular)
Little to no knowledge of 'The Talk' exists, sans personal survivor records.
Pacify
(Methodology) (Utility) (Vernacular)
Little to no knowledge of 'Pacify' exists, sans personal survivor records.
Red Static Pop
(Methodology) (Utility)
Little to no knowledge of 'Red Static Pop' exists, sans personal survivor records.
Maw Talk
(Vernacular)
Little to no knowledge of 'Maw Talk' exists, sans personal survivor records.
N₂ Nebula
(Methodology) (Utility)
Little to no knowledge of 'N₂ Nebula' exists, sans personal survivor records.
Character Sidequels
"Knot in Tow"
(Scribbles on a section of posterboard, folded into fourths and tucked into a box spring. Yet it is burned--frayed at the bottom:)
Friend:
Some winds whisper for the abandonment of familiarity: To trust in oneself, rather than one’s tools. It is failure which begets growth yet gained—not the spoils of growth, themselves. For each of our regrets is but a notch in a tree trunk. A scar, once white, green, and bleeding may yet brown, blacken, and grey in the wooden weave: That which remains by day and night—every day; every night—as a mark scored, scourged, by a lonely sunset long, long ago.
But trees are trees, and they cannot help but grow. Grow, grow, grow—tall as towers, they stand. They nourish and nurture the land, neither knowing nor ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Glued to the poster board's bottom in rubber cement, there is a jagged quasi-poem written in different handwriting: )
These sickly canines. Family stilts for a family tree—fibrous and tap alike. But what must it be like, living like this? The pup’s pack’s grown a’ stained spindle. Matted fibrous roots. Wires. Capillaries. Leaches. Buzzing. Buzzing. A deer fly’s struggling—stuck in the muck, even up above.
Two-fifths nature. Three fifths nurture. Bottled thrice this century: rice; yarn; licorice. Ask, but you don’t. Ask, but you can’t. Queried again? Never-ending consumption. Such a delight taste—god bless. It is inheritance, yes?
Unrolling. Back of the tongue.
The throat.
Red, red wine.
(Or so they say.)
"Phasmophobia"
"Ma de Maw is a Rachter,” says Spline.
Yes.
“Sew,” Spline says, and Cospline he sews.
He zip her chaw.
“Part the eyes,” says Spline. “Part.”
So Cospline he pinch it slit in silt. It salt ‘til Tan tilt yaw—way, way, way too clockwise. Way too close to lock closed maw. He split it lip. Bobble blood. Ma’s.
“Part,” Spline says. “Part,” like he did not see all saw.
No, no, no—they did.
No, no, no—they shadows all.
All candle-lit they tall. Ten. Twenty. Young some. Older some. But Spline’s spent suns sum more. He say Rachters’ bodies’ belly bubbles pump no blood. Say Rachters no blood at all. But at Ma’s chaw’s blood they do not betray him. He sums greater.
So he greater.
Tan try dial back Ma’s head. Cospline he flat thumb eyelid of Ma. Spline he stare right at rest. Rest they stare at Spline’s star black star eyes. It midnight autumn—so sunrise is Erie eye. It true. To them—it true: Maude Ma was Rachter.
She lie and die.
And Spline eye shine inshore, offshore, inside, outside.
It true.
And now at autumn midnight rights, he watch them watch him watch them. Behind him Cospline says eyes parted. Tan tag and crack cold Ma neck like fish back. It crunch. So. Cospline says: Parted two.
Spline turns back on men, women; older, babies; foodless babblers, glutton mudders. He head had hung over Ma’s once before. Once, one wants to say, but won’t say to shadow’s wax-wane: Twenty-two of town who went to Spline’s song.
“Hat we be!” Spline announces for half-rest.
The people are not yet more than people—so no mouths move.
“See me!” he puts palm over its place: Whole rest hat--knob-knuckled right thumb hanging above cold Maude Ma’s cold Milky Way eyes. To she of no hearing, he says, quietly, “What’re Ma in so fuss?”
And presses his thumbprint on each of her coals—Andromeda’s fire in his eyes.
------
The chikee hut of southern sands hummed en masse in northern muck—yet the shores of Lake Erie were silent.
"Cat's Ladle"
(This section is still under construction)
docs.google.com/document/d/1Qj8Bg9XNUXODaH8oYUNQtTutlG8NPCgVSSeN5JvyxhE/edit?usp=sh
'A' is for Applesauce
(Turquoise ink, cursive, on a paper folded in half: Corner-tucked beneath a stone in a bed of flowers.)
(Part of the note is written in purple ink--and in different handwriting)
May evergreens rattle ever in wind-wound whispers. They nourish and nurture the land, neither knowing nor not; naught a knot now owes is owned—one’s own, two-ton tree never downed. For the noble nurture the nocturn: Never a wanton taunt tone; taught awn. Never a town not know your name. They sing it. Yes.
They sing it—and forests they grow.
July lingers. It is crisp clear noon.
The loved shine-loved others.
These of wing never die.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Turquoise ink, cursive, on an otherwise blank book page. Folded in half, corner-tucked, under some sunflowers.)
Bright high caps beckon night rites, yet a still house’s still hours see you. How yew is not yolked for us of end’s doubt.
Think you on this:
The ky’s moorings are forever yours. Such shines upon us.
May ever flourish, these remains.
May-ever-be: The happiness you’ve shone
"Haunt"
Kitchen floor's dusty. Only it's dirt.
Shattered window's glass glitter flutters something fierce: Invisible in the trespassing downpour. Bee needles, anyhow. Water is everywhere. Still, somehow, only dry dirt. Only.
A dead man is dying on the floorboards.
Happens a lot, these days. Especially at night.
Guts leaking, sleek, red salt, smeared on a couch arm.
One is ever-surprised to see such a display--even in such times.
It's something about owning those guts, yourself.
Seeing your deep reds, purples, pinks, and browns.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll tell you what the dying man is thinking--as there isn't anyone else around to do so:
But be aware:
Any thoughts gleaned--they will become your own.
That glass in the air.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Still-sit-still.
B-bless your rites.
To bless your house’s hour .
It is still in still suns, your house’s hour.
Your rites are a house’s hour.
Still.
H-house’s hour upon.
Gr-round. U-under gr--
Sh-
Of us wh-who s-s-ay th-th.
It is the sun.
------------------------------------------------------------------
As is true of every life story, beginning to end, someone always shows up--least expected.
Doesn't mean they'll save you, though.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
(Salted pipes prevailing? Rochester watertowers?
Undertow bodies?
What's that, now, Jay? )
Still. Still in still suns.
House’s hour still. Still sits still.
Building’s bad, Jay Boy Blue. Bad. bad. bad. That window. Ha ha!.
Still…Still stilts still sit still. S-still--
You okay, Jay? Never had a maw before, 'til now. When’d brine become your appetite?
What a maw, Jay. What-‘ta-maw.
Now you own no know-how: Not no way; not no how.
Daytime thicket.
Maw, tic’ maw—ha ha ha.
Nighttime swell.
Cheer up, Jay
--------------------------------
The man on the floor--he is of acute timing. Throat's caught in his throat, now. Can't talk.
-------------------------------
Cheer up, Jay.
Not’s so ‘life depends—anyhow. You been chawin’ in trees again?
Trespassin’ gains’t the land’s needs?
Nappin?
Rattlin’ a little ra-ra ear-r***e you pick up?
Up past Hillards?
No one—ahem—
N-Ne-. Never-knot-in. I cannot do this. It is--
‘Nobody talks like this, now a’days, Jay.
You get my inflection, there, Jay?
You able to understand me?
Because I can barely understand myself--what with it not being twenty-fucking-roundabouts-twelve, anymore.
'Been a while since I’ve used poor-spirits’ talk.
Damned to keep it in tow, fucking up my lips—but damned if I don’t, too.
Anyone who’s everyone, ‘round these parts, knows this type of talk—how I’m talkin,’ right now—can gitcha kilt’.
You can ‘H-h-h-hous-s-se’s h-who-woah-‘re hour’s upon us all you want, Jay.
But until you talk the talk Penny's taught—until being awake while not isn’t known, and is your own to own?
You’ll never walk The True Walk.
Not that any of that matters, anymore.
--Ah’hem:
Where was I?
You hear ‘bout what happened to C.M Sterling, by the by?
Hell if I have, I mean.
But I figure him? Bein’ who he was?
Banisher, and all that, I mean.
Someone like that--they don't 'just go missing.'
Any-who.
Just figured I'd ask. Sorry about that, Jay.
I know friends of fools are food for forethought, but I’d shadowed your wobble-maw a little too closely, since the--
-H-h-h. H-ouh(he cannot say.)
The man he coughs and sees his blood.
Yeah.
Reckon' that's your heart and lungs, there.
Givin' out, I mean.
Them bein' tied together, and all
..W-hat. Water.
Rachter? Givin' up with a Swan Song's Dive, eh?
S-sun--
S'far as I can see, Jay:
S-sunfl --
It's pitch black midnight outside.
No stars out, neither.
On account of all them clouds.
-------------------------------------------------------------
So anyway.
What We Become
“You’re a murderer, you know,” Betty says.
Red fog rolls fast past the highway. The highway does not roll. Neither nowhere’s roadway nor roundabout ferns: Bramble scars. Spike-framing beetle carcass cars. And up and over hot gray cement, a house window’s glass glint is gleaned something sharp—sans sand dust floating in an upstairs bedroom: Suburbia’s cotton candy wallpaper box—dipped yellow by years and years.
And in the gloom: Crisp brown dog’s black-olive eyes—not alive. Red-brown pits swallowed in the sockets. The sockets are shadow craters, chitter-backed red-black leg stalks squirm and stretch within. And Betty, what’s left of her, lets her cranberry sauce tongue hang free—bile droplets dripping slow like syrup onto the carpet.
And John Smith—he does not turn to her.
She, or it, is but a marred carcass sitting in a rocking chair.
“What does pacify mean?” asks the dog.
Or what’s left of it.
John holds eyes on the forest beyond the asphalt river: That red, hazy tree line past that field’s farm—north of a place where men and women yelled for war. The radio’s static it pops. Says, “For Constantine,” and John cannot help but smile. There was still good in the world, it seemed—as such intonations are damned impossible to proxy.
The dog—it does not like this.
“What does pacify mean, John?” Betty says—voice lowering, going smokey into her Erie years: she of The Yardside who’d cared for so many—yet always stayed herself when they’d talked. And so John knows that this Betty, not Betty, speaks as if to one’s kin; it, showing itself as such in an attempt to be human—betraying the pull upon a week’s lost comfort in having one’s self own oneself at all. Even at this tone, his own ears now hear a voice not heard, physically, in three years: Admit it’s all over, Jay, says an old friend—or what remained as such. Always were one to play games, you know. Tell me. Tell me. What does pacify mean?
To the pup, as it really is such, John says:
“It’s how you lead the dead home, Ma.”
He says this to comfort the pup.
And Betty nods.
Real or not, she has to.
Because to John, it is real.
So it’s real.
“Murderer!” the pup-puppet says—voice that of a child’s: One not knowing what to say, or why to say it—simply saying what it thinks should be said.
“No, child,” John says, calmly, to the eyes in the window.
“No, Ma,” he says—hoping to show the pup its way home, too.
With sunflowers, perhaps, if need be.
Tithings of trees, harbors, or oak—yew knots in tow, those one knows never to yolk; their alkaloids are poison. Yet grave by grave, tale by tale, few ways to pacify passing fogs of The Deadlands existed. For such hazes hale from the heart, he knew. One way or another.
Anyway, his old friend’s voice cannot help itself but say.
“Anyway-anyway-anyway,” the pup says.
John does not need to look deeper into the window’s reflection.
He knows it wags its tail.
So, he chuckles. And the pup it chuckles, too.
“Why don’t you run along,” John says. “Out there,” he nods to the blood haze. “Run about with your friends. Hmm?” In truth, the pup was a pup some days ago.
Yet he’d held onto it—letting it hold onto him. Because he had to know.
Because if he knew it were true.
He’d know.
“Did you-you find?” the pup says, deep at heart itself for once—somewhere within. “Did you-you find the man behind the mask?”
John rubs his chin, “Hmm.” He says.
“You killed him,” the pup says. “You did—” Betty goes.
John shakes his head. “Hmm?” he says, quirking a brow.
“No, no…” he says. For the first time in some time, he feels old.
Killed me good n’ dead, you did, Jerrick says.
A faraway field:
Tic…tic..tack…
“Jerrick died, I think,” John says, “the day he left Rochester.”
Trees swaying. John laces his fingers at the small of his back—nine, in full count.
“Spline,” John explains to the pup—pup’s head quirked; curiosity—“Was but a shell of insanity. Fractured by wind.”
Red, winding wind.
The creature goes silent, face lowering. It turns, walking to the door—head swaying, to and fro, like its lost its pack.
“And did you find,” it says, stopping at the door.
Turning, one last time:
“What is behind…mine?
Below, at the woodland edge, human-things sway.
They walk. Drawn closer.
Closer.
Fish—shiners, they were—wiggling to the man at the window. Somewhere, in the living room below, glass shatters. Thuds—two walls. Leftmost countertop, by the wayward ear’s take.
Yet, still, John stays still. There were two other leads, as it were. And people were in dire peril, if his assumptions were correct.
So it'd have to do.
“No,” he says to the dog—and the dog is no more.
“No,” he says once more—smiling, seeing himself in the window: Eyes, first time in a while—his own home having grown over with nature’s ever-needs. And his own beard had become scraggly in these weeks of travel. And they, below; scrambling in their own nature—swiftly up the stairs.
“Always their hallways,” John sighs, grumpily, watching the growing shadow—over east, towards the Monroe walls. Had one hour already passed? He did not know. But to the stragglers, staggering and straddling garden walls—tripping, yet swarming forward nonetheless.
“-‘C’ting goddamn heads—” he says, knowing the stairwell will soon be upon him. Yet he watches the red sun glow. And for the first time—in a long time, come to think of it—he lets go. And the dog, making headway down the boulevard, runs.
It runs, runs, runs.
Fast as the devil, it goes!
Into some beginning.
Or into some end (break-it’s foul-leg, damned thing.)
Whether past is prologue—one can never know.
But John does not care. The landing behind him it screams—but he does not care. Out the window he goes! Tumbles the gutter, trot-roll, gravel-shoes roll. Red flare ignites, lava-hot. Red-static popping! And on goes the tin foil, the soil-smothered wool, and a thin bungee cord ‘round the back of the neck: Two small, red lightbulbs flicker on with a nine-volt battery; the red fog dogs—young infected; growling; yet do not approach; feet from his feet; red fog swirling; face it sweats; and yet—
Off, and off, and off he jogs!
And for the first time—in a long time, come to think of—
(His shin hits a recycling bin—)
(—"G’damned ‘N-hoopid!”)
(Steadies himself--left boot catches open lid--stumbles)
(“Gnab’n’stupid!”)
(--Ducks under bloodied, grab-grip swipe. Lumbers left--and steadies himself again!)
-----------
The Monstrophist heel-toe jogs into the blood-orange sunset.
Happy with who he’s become.
The Other Side
A letter to Tokori:
And some sonnets or ballads of the gales we know—in these are the winds of predisposition. You will watch them go—their hair spun but wrung from split spindles like seaweed. And not at all too shallow these Erie rooms are, filled to their brims with smoke—tittering and tattered.
The water is blue and then it is green; there may be no time, no air, to drift and toil in the Maumee Algae depths. It dances to green light. Only. And no, but no—our crowds are bottled and wax and wane; Maude Ma waxes and wanes.
And how might I not fear our people? Eyes saturnine upon mine yet not so humble, nor ready to beget truth. And so they must push forward, hearing of C.M. Sterling: He who has Walked the Walk. And so into the unknown, more Banishers dance—falling into The Barrens. Or fading into The Deadlands. By dream or by daylight, none can save them.
“Go! Turn, go!” I have heard John himself say to those in our company—not thirty miles from the Knobs.
And yet:
“Leave, and I shall ascend,” he has told me, in private. This was well before Valley’s whipping Red Winds—not at all far from the swirling Tides of Jotun, either. “And perhaps we will all dance before long,” one of Maude Ma’s most trusted, himself, whispered to me. And still: He so steps, still! He so dances, shallow upon the place where the waves go blue, back here—in Erie.
And thus Maude Ma brims again as Rachter; another Thicket Puppet rises; The Holder, or such other names theorized: She was born in Rochester, too—as John and I were. And New York’s deepest secrets soon infect our waters: Maude Ma’s Erie Company, They of The Hurdling, will sway like the trees and be downed. The Red Wind tosses us to and fro, exhaled from Kentucky to Ohio; beckoning many places, Pennsylvania among them; New York, it is the backdraft unforeseen. Are your eyes similarly blighted? Tokori, you must know: New York is Kentucky’s sibling. Jefferson and Monroe are twins.
Maude Ma turns but does not wallow: Rochester's Rachter.
The rest wallow and waver as little greens by the bushel. But Maude Ma has fallen into those bushels, before them—between the rocks, the muck, and the only pearl Erie waters might beget. These such rations: The Barrens of New York yonder holds many secrets. But one of them is not unfamiliar.
I know you know glory is morally kept clandestine, Tokori. And faith, eternal. But you must not allow Erie’s aquamarine evenings to become red mornings. We all but pause before such things. Maude Ma’s unnamed is indeed a Yolkling: John Smith will pray unto Rochester's poison if Mother does not aid us.
The poison—Maude Ma has already taken.
-Spline
---
S1E8
Cat's Ladle, Part II
Phage | Rhizobia
ɐᴉqoɥdoɯsɐɥԀ
October, 2025
“You trust magic,” John says.
“I trust undiscovered science, “ says Spline.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Summer, 2028
Three rivers run aground before the Hudson.
John's Yardside of his own:
Calls it 'Greenlight Sage.'
Two men ever brewed Phage Rhizobia, successfully.
Wading into the rainy river: One, alone:
Panax Phage.
Cyno[____] Cyanophage is red, like the snout.
"Dogmen's Draught," John says, old brew-bottle cap unwound.
Four days before the bombing of Pittsford, a man called John Smith stepped shirtless into the lime-green river, lime-green algae clumped into a black slim-fit pant pocket. No shoes. He stared at the misty water's rose-red sun: A nitrogen-popped mixture of Dogmen's saliva whisked among binders--and stirred and scooped the salve resting at the bottom.
A friend named Jerrick once told him: "That which remains by day and night—every day; every night—is a mark scored, scourged, by a lonely sunset long, long ago. If you could learn one truth, John. Only one--on account of life only allowing one, at the end of the day, all things considered--"
"Would you?" John says, now--eyes salt-watery and red. It's the taste, that sting: He's swallowed the Dogmen's saliva, already. It tastes like clay, copper, and garlic. And as he takes one final, lingering look at the green river--he knows, come noon, the Red Wind will have painted it. And he, downstream by then, will be but a mask of a mask of a mask.
"Second lead," The aging man says. His voice is hoarse in the fog which begins to sizzle.
An answer's answer.
The river's surface wraps around him--and he becomes the current:
Knot in tow.
-------
S2E1
Your History, Written in Pencil
One day before the Pittsford bombings, 11:30 pm:
A woodland neighborhood alongside Monroe’'s outbound highway glows like a cigar: Beyond the main drag’s farm and factory, the straight-shot road smells like an oven in passing breezes.
(WiP)
Cyanobacteria, or Cyanophyta, is common in the Great Lakes—as well as Saginaw Bay and Green Bay. Often foul-smelling, it is known to discolor still waters when in bloom. Some blooms can grow rapidly, often not ceasing until October’s end. Cyanobacteria is known to impact local ecosystem health in any regard, and many variations of such harmful algal blooms are poisonous to animals and humans alike.The Maumee River, or Shawnee: Hotaawathiipi, runs from northeastern Indiana, across Ohio’s northwest, and into Lake Erie.
It is also titled Taawaawa Siipiiwi in the Algonquian Miami-Illinois language.
-Entry
-Entry
-----
(Reference List Only - Extended Compendium is an in-game resource)
Greenlight
(Location)
Little to no knowledge of 'Greenlight' exists, sans personal survivor records.
The Tides of Jotun
(Location)
Little to no knowledge of 'The Tides of Jotun' exists, sans personal survivor records.
Part the Eyes
(Methodology)
Little to no knowledge of 'Part the Eyes' exists, sans personal survivor records.
Chaw Zip
(Methodology)
Little to no knowledge of 'Chaw Zip' exists, sans personal survivor records.
The Walk
(Methodology)
Little to no knowledge of 'The Walk' exists, sans personal survivor records.
The Talk
(Vernacular)
Little to no knowledge of 'The Talk' exists, sans personal survivor records.
Pacify
(Methodology) (Utility) (Vernacular)
Little to no knowledge of 'Pacify' exists, sans personal survivor records.
Red Static Pop
(Methodology) (Utility)
Little to no knowledge of 'Red Static Pop' exists, sans personal survivor records.
Maw Talk
(Vernacular)
Little to no knowledge of 'Maw Talk' exists, sans personal survivor records.
N₂ Nebula
(Methodology) (Utility)
Little to no knowledge of 'N₂ Nebula' exists, sans personal survivor records.
Character Sidequels
"Knot in Tow"
(Scribbles on a section of posterboard, folded into fourths and tucked into a box spring. Yet it is burned--frayed at the bottom:)
Friend:
Some winds whisper for the abandonment of familiarity: To trust in oneself, rather than one’s tools. It is failure which begets growth yet gained—not the spoils of growth, themselves. For each of our regrets is but a notch in a tree trunk. A scar, once white, green, and bleeding may yet brown, blacken, and grey in the wooden weave: That which remains by day and night—every day; every night—as a mark scored, scourged, by a lonely sunset long, long ago.
But trees are trees, and they cannot help but grow. Grow, grow, grow—tall as towers, they stand. They nourish and nurture the land, neither knowing nor ~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~
(Glued to the poster board's bottom in rubber cement, there is a jagged quasi-poem written in different handwriting: )
These sickly canines. Family stilts for a family tree—fibrous and tap alike. But what must it be like, living like this? The pup’s pack’s grown a’ stained spindle. Matted fibrous roots. Wires. Capillaries. Leaches. Buzzing. Buzzing. A deer fly’s struggling—stuck in the muck, even up above.
Two-fifths nature. Three fifths nurture. Bottled thrice this century: rice; yarn; licorice. Ask, but you don’t. Ask, but you can’t. Queried again? Never-ending consumption. Such a delight taste—god bless. It is inheritance, yes?
Unrolling. Back of the tongue.
The throat.
Red, red wine.
(Or so they say.)
"Phasmophobia"
"Ma de Maw is a Rachter,” says Spline.
Yes.
“Sew,” Spline says, and Cospline he sews.
He zip her chaw.
“Part the eyes,” says Spline. “Part.”
So Cospline he pinch it slit in silt. It salt ‘til Tan tilt yaw—way, way, way too clockwise. Way too close to lock closed maw. He split it lip. Bobble blood. Ma’s.
“Part,” Spline says. “Part,” like he did not see all saw.
No, no, no—they did.
No, no, no—they shadows all.
All candle-lit they tall. Ten. Twenty. Young some. Older some. But Spline’s spent suns sum more. He say Rachters’ bodies’ belly bubbles pump no blood. Say Rachters no blood at all. But at Ma’s chaw’s blood they do not betray him. He sums greater.
So he greater.
Tan try dial back Ma’s head. Cospline he flat thumb eyelid of Ma. Spline he stare right at rest. Rest they stare at Spline’s star black star eyes. It midnight autumn—so sunrise is Erie eye. It true. To them—it true: Maude Ma was Rachter.
She lie and die.
And Spline eye shine inshore, offshore, inside, outside.
It true.
And now at autumn midnight rights, he watch them watch him watch them. Behind him Cospline says eyes parted. Tan tag and crack cold Ma neck like fish back. It crunch. So. Cospline says: Parted two.
Spline turns back on men, women; older, babies; foodless babblers, glutton mudders. He head had hung over Ma’s once before. Once, one wants to say, but won’t say to shadow’s wax-wane: Twenty-two of town who went to Spline’s song.
“Hat we be!” Spline announces for half-rest.
The people are not yet more than people—so no mouths move.
“See me!” he puts palm over its place: Whole rest hat--knob-knuckled right thumb hanging above cold Maude Ma’s cold Milky Way eyes. To she of no hearing, he says, quietly, “What’re Ma in so fuss?”
And presses his thumbprint on each of her coals—Andromeda’s fire in his eyes.
------
The chikee hut of southern sands hummed en masse in northern muck—yet the shores of Lake Erie were silent.
"Cat's Ladle"
(This section is still under construction)
docs.google.com/document/d/1Qj8Bg9XNUXODaH8oYUNQtTutlG8NPCgVSSeN5JvyxhE/edit?usp=sh
'A' is for Applesauce
(Turquoise ink, cursive, on a paper folded in half: Corner-tucked beneath a stone in a bed of flowers.)
(Part of the note is written in purple ink--and in different handwriting)
May evergreens rattle ever in wind-wound whispers. They nourish and nurture the land, neither knowing nor not; naught a knot now owes is owned—one’s own, two-ton tree never downed. For the noble nurture the nocturn: Never a wanton taunt tone; taught awn. Never a town not know your name. They sing it. Yes.
They sing it—and forests they grow.
July lingers. It is crisp clear noon.
The loved shine-loved others.
These of wing never die.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
(Turquoise ink, cursive, on an otherwise blank book page. Folded in half, corner-tucked, under some sunflowers.)
Bright high caps beckon night rites, yet a still house’s still hours see you. How yew is not yolked for us of end’s doubt.
Think you on this:
The ky’s moorings are forever yours. Such shines upon us.
May ever flourish, these remains.
May-ever-be: The happiness you’ve shone
"Haunt"
Kitchen floor's dusty. Only it's dirt.
Shattered window's glass glitter flutters something fierce: Invisible in the trespassing downpour. Bee needles, anyhow. Water is everywhere. Still, somehow, only dry dirt. Only.
A dead man is dying on the floorboards.
Happens a lot, these days. Especially at night.
Guts leaking, sleek, red salt, smeared on a couch arm.
One is ever-surprised to see such a display--even in such times.
It's something about owning those guts, yourself.
Seeing your deep reds, purples, pinks, and browns.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
I'll tell you what the dying man is thinking--as there isn't anyone else around to do so:
But be aware:
Any thoughts gleaned--they will become your own.
That glass in the air.
---------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------------
Still-sit-still.
B-bless your rites.
To bless your house’s hour .
It is still in still suns, your house’s hour.
Your rites are a house’s hour.
Still.
H-house’s hour upon.
Gr-round. U-under gr--
Sh-
Of us wh-who s-s-ay th-th.
It is the sun.
------------------------------------------------------------------
As is true of every life story, beginning to end, someone always shows up--least expected.
Doesn't mean they'll save you, though.
-----------------------------------------------------------------
(Salted pipes prevailing? Rochester watertowers?
Undertow bodies?
What's that, now, Jay? )
Still. Still in still suns.
House’s hour still. Still sits still.
Building’s bad, Jay Boy Blue. Bad. bad. bad. That window. Ha ha!.
Still…Still stilts still sit still. S-still--
You okay, Jay? Never had a maw before, 'til now. When’d brine become your appetite?
What a maw, Jay. What-‘ta-maw.
Now you own no know-how: Not no way; not no how.
Daytime thicket.
Maw, tic’ maw—ha ha ha.
Nighttime swell.
Cheer up, Jay
--------------------------------
The man on the floor--he is of acute timing. Throat's caught in his throat, now. Can't talk.
-------------------------------
Cheer up, Jay.
Not’s so ‘life depends—anyhow. You been chawin’ in trees again?
Trespassin’ gains’t the land’s needs?
Nappin?
Rattlin’ a little ra-ra ear-r***e you pick up?
Up past Hillards?
No one—ahem—
N-Ne-. Never-knot-in. I cannot do this. It is--
‘Nobody talks like this, now a’days, Jay.
You get my inflection, there, Jay?
You able to understand me?
Because I can barely understand myself--what with it not being twenty-fucking-roundabouts-twelve, anymore.
'Been a while since I’ve used poor-spirits’ talk.
Damned to keep it in tow, fucking up my lips—but damned if I don’t, too.
Anyone who’s everyone, ‘round these parts, knows this type of talk—how I’m talkin,’ right now—can gitcha kilt’.
You can ‘H-h-h-hous-s-se’s h-who-woah-‘re hour’s upon us all you want, Jay.
But until you talk the talk Penny's taught—until being awake while not isn’t known, and is your own to own?
You’ll never walk The True Walk.
Not that any of that matters, anymore.
--Ah’hem:
Where was I?
You hear ‘bout what happened to C.M Sterling, by the by?
Hell if I have, I mean.
But I figure him? Bein’ who he was?
Banisher, and all that, I mean.
Someone like that--they don't 'just go missing.'
Any-who.
Just figured I'd ask. Sorry about that, Jay.
I know friends of fools are food for forethought, but I’d shadowed your wobble-maw a little too closely, since the--
-H-h-h. H-ouh(he cannot say.)
The man he coughs and sees his blood.
Yeah.
Reckon' that's your heart and lungs, there.
Givin' out, I mean.
Them bein' tied together, and all
..W-hat. Water.
Rachter? Givin' up with a Swan Song's Dive, eh?
S-sun--
S'far as I can see, Jay:
S-sunfl --
It's pitch black midnight outside.
No stars out, neither.
On account of all them clouds.
-------------------------------------------------------------
So anyway.
What We Become
“You’re a murderer, you know,” Betty says.
Red fog rolls fast past the highway. The highway does not roll. Neither nowhere’s roadway nor roundabout ferns: Bramble scars. Spike-framing beetle carcass cars. And up and over hot gray cement, a house window’s glass glint is gleaned something sharp—sans sand dust floating in an upstairs bedroom: Suburbia’s cotton candy wallpaper box—dipped yellow by years and years.
And in the gloom: Crisp brown dog’s black-olive eyes—not alive. Red-brown pits swallowed in the sockets. The sockets are shadow craters, chitter-backed red-black leg stalks squirm and stretch within. And Betty, what’s left of her, lets her cranberry sauce tongue hang free—bile droplets dripping slow like syrup onto the carpet.
And John Smith—he does not turn to her.
She, or it, is but a marred carcass sitting in a rocking chair.
“What does pacify mean?” asks the dog.
Or what’s left of it.
John holds eyes on the forest beyond the asphalt river: That red, hazy tree line past that field’s farm—north of a place where men and women yelled for war. The radio’s static it pops. Says, “For Constantine,” and John cannot help but smile. There was still good in the world, it seemed—as such intonations are damned impossible to proxy.
The dog—it does not like this.
“What does pacify mean, John?” Betty says—voice lowering, going smokey into her Erie years: she of The Yardside who’d cared for so many—yet always stayed herself when they’d talked. And so John knows that this Betty, not Betty, speaks as if to one’s kin; it, showing itself as such in an attempt to be human—betraying the pull upon a week’s lost comfort in having one’s self own oneself at all. Even at this tone, his own ears now hear a voice not heard, physically, in three years: Admit it’s all over, Jay, says an old friend—or what remained as such. Always were one to play games, you know. Tell me. Tell me. What does pacify mean?
To the pup, as it really is such, John says:
“It’s how you lead the dead home, Ma.”
He says this to comfort the pup.
And Betty nods.
Real or not, she has to.
Because to John, it is real.
So it’s real.
“Murderer!” the pup-puppet says—voice that of a child’s: One not knowing what to say, or why to say it—simply saying what it thinks should be said.
“No, child,” John says, calmly, to the eyes in the window.
“No, Ma,” he says—hoping to show the pup its way home, too.
With sunflowers, perhaps, if need be.
Tithings of trees, harbors, or oak—yew knots in tow, those one knows never to yolk; their alkaloids are poison. Yet grave by grave, tale by tale, few ways to pacify passing fogs of The Deadlands existed. For such hazes hale from the heart, he knew. One way or another.
Anyway, his old friend’s voice cannot help itself but say.
“Anyway-anyway-anyway,” the pup says.
John does not need to look deeper into the window’s reflection.
He knows it wags its tail.
So, he chuckles. And the pup it chuckles, too.
“Why don’t you run along,” John says. “Out there,” he nods to the blood haze. “Run about with your friends. Hmm?” In truth, the pup was a pup some days ago.
Yet he’d held onto it—letting it hold onto him. Because he had to know.
Because if he knew it were true.
He’d know.
“Did you-you find?” the pup says, deep at heart itself for once—somewhere within. “Did you-you find the man behind the mask?”
John rubs his chin, “Hmm.” He says.
“You killed him,” the pup says. “You did—” Betty goes.
John shakes his head. “Hmm?” he says, quirking a brow.
“No, no…” he says. For the first time in some time, he feels old.
Killed me good n’ dead, you did, Jerrick says.
A faraway field:
Tic…tic..tack…
“Jerrick died, I think,” John says, “the day he left Rochester.”
Trees swaying. John laces his fingers at the small of his back—nine, in full count.
“Spline,” John explains to the pup—pup’s head quirked; curiosity—“Was but a shell of insanity. Fractured by wind.”
Red, winding wind.
The creature goes silent, face lowering. It turns, walking to the door—head swaying, to and fro, like its lost its pack.
“And did you find,” it says, stopping at the door.
Turning, one last time:
“What is behind…mine?
Below, at the woodland edge, human-things sway.
They walk. Drawn closer.
Closer.
Fish—shiners, they were—wiggling to the man at the window. Somewhere, in the living room below, glass shatters. Thuds—two walls. Leftmost countertop, by the wayward ear’s take.
Yet, still, John stays still. There were two other leads, as it were. And people were in dire peril, if his assumptions were correct.
So it'd have to do.
“No,” he says to the dog—and the dog is no more.
“No,” he says once more—smiling, seeing himself in the window: Eyes, first time in a while—his own home having grown over with nature’s ever-needs. And his own beard had become scraggly in these weeks of travel. And they, below; scrambling in their own nature—swiftly up the stairs.
“Always their hallways,” John sighs, grumpily, watching the growing shadow—over east, towards the Monroe walls. Had one hour already passed? He did not know. But to the stragglers, staggering and straddling garden walls—tripping, yet swarming forward nonetheless.
“-‘C’ting goddamn heads—” he says, knowing the stairwell will soon be upon him. Yet he watches the red sun glow. And for the first time—in a long time, come to think of it—he lets go. And the dog, making headway down the boulevard, runs.
It runs, runs, runs.
Fast as the devil, it goes!
Into some beginning.
Or into some end (break-it’s foul-leg, damned thing.)
Whether past is prologue—one can never know.
But John does not care. The landing behind him it screams—but he does not care. Out the window he goes! Tumbles the gutter, trot-roll, gravel-shoes roll. Red flare ignites, lava-hot. Red-static popping! And on goes the tin foil, the soil-smothered wool, and a thin bungee cord ‘round the back of the neck: Two small, red lightbulbs flicker on with a nine-volt battery; the red fog dogs—young infected; growling; yet do not approach; feet from his feet; red fog swirling; face it sweats; and yet—
Off, and off, and off he jogs!
And for the first time—in a long time, come to think of—
(His shin hits a recycling bin—)
(—"G’damned ‘N-hoopid!”)
(Steadies himself--left boot catches open lid--stumbles)
(“Gnab’n’stupid!”)
(--Ducks under bloodied, grab-grip swipe. Lumbers left--and steadies himself again!)
-----------
The Monstrophist heel-toe jogs into the blood-orange sunset.
Happy with who he’s become.
The Other Side
A letter to Tokori:
And some sonnets or ballads of the gales we know—in these are the winds of predisposition. You will watch them go—their hair spun but wrung from split spindles like seaweed. And not at all too shallow these Erie rooms are, filled to their brims with smoke—tittering and tattered.
The water is blue and then it is green; there may be no time, no air, to drift and toil in the Maumee Algae depths. It dances to green light. Only. And no, but no—our crowds are bottled and wax and wane; Maude Ma waxes and wanes.
And how might I not fear our people? Eyes saturnine upon mine yet not so humble, nor ready to beget truth. And so they must push forward, hearing of C.M. Sterling: He who has Walked the Walk. And so into the unknown, more Banishers dance—falling into The Barrens. Or fading into The Deadlands. By dream or by daylight, none can save them.
“Go! Turn, go!” I have heard John himself say to those in our company—not thirty miles from the Knobs.
And yet:
“Leave, and I shall ascend,” he has told me, in private. This was well before Valley’s whipping Red Winds—not at all far from the swirling Tides of Jotun, either. “And perhaps we will all dance before long,” one of Maude Ma’s most trusted, himself, whispered to me. And still: He so steps, still! He so dances, shallow upon the place where the waves go blue, back here—in Erie.
And thus Maude Ma brims again as Rachter; another Thicket Puppet rises; The Holder, or such other names theorized: She was born in Rochester, too—as John and I were. And New York’s deepest secrets soon infect our waters: Maude Ma’s Erie Company, They of The Hurdling, will sway like the trees and be downed. The Red Wind tosses us to and fro, exhaled from Kentucky to Ohio; beckoning many places, Pennsylvania among them; New York, it is the backdraft unforeseen. Are your eyes similarly blighted? Tokori, you must know: New York is Kentucky’s sibling. Jefferson and Monroe are twins.
Maude Ma turns but does not wallow: Rochester's Rachter.
The rest wallow and waver as little greens by the bushel. But Maude Ma has fallen into those bushels, before them—between the rocks, the muck, and the only pearl Erie waters might beget. These such rations: The Barrens of New York yonder holds many secrets. But one of them is not unfamiliar.
I know you know glory is morally kept clandestine, Tokori. And faith, eternal. But you must not allow Erie’s aquamarine evenings to become red mornings. We all but pause before such things. Maude Ma’s unnamed is indeed a Yolkling: John Smith will pray unto Rochester's poison if Mother does not aid us.
The poison—Maude Ma has already taken.
-Spline
---
S1E8
Cat's Ladle, Part II
Phage | Rhizobia
ɐᴉqoɥdoɯsɐɥԀ
October, 2025
“You trust magic,” John says.
“I trust undiscovered science, “ says Spline.
------------------------------------------------------------------------------
End of Summer, 2028
Three rivers run aground before the Hudson.
John's Yardside of his own:
Calls it 'Greenlight Sage.'
Two men ever brewed Phage Rhizobia, successfully.
Wading into the rainy river: One, alone:
Panax Phage.
Cyno[____] Cyanophage is red, like the snout.
"Dogmen's Draught," John says, old brew-bottle cap unwound.
Four days before the bombing of Pittsford, a man called John Smith stepped shirtless into the lime-green river, lime-green algae clumped into a black slim-fit pant pocket. No shoes. He stared at the misty water's rose-red sun: A nitrogen-popped mixture of Dogmen's saliva whisked among binders--and stirred and scooped the salve resting at the bottom.
A friend named Jerrick once told him: "That which remains by day and night—every day; every night—is a mark scored, scourged, by a lonely sunset long, long ago. If you could learn one truth, John. Only one--on account of life only allowing one, at the end of the day, all things considered--"
"Would you?" John says, now--eyes salt-watery and red. It's the taste, that sting: He's swallowed the Dogmen's saliva, already. It tastes like clay, copper, and garlic. And as he takes one final, lingering look at the green river--he knows, come noon, the Red Wind will have painted it. And he, downstream by then, will be but a mask of a mask of a mask.
"Second lead," The aging man says. His voice is hoarse in the fog which begins to sizzle.
An answer's answer.
The river's surface wraps around him--and he becomes the current:
Knot in tow.
-------
S2E1
Your History, Written in Pencil
One day before the Pittsford bombings, 11:30 pm:
A woodland neighborhood alongside Monroe’'s outbound highway glows like a cigar: Beyond the main drag’s farm and factory, the straight-shot road smells like an oven in passing breezes.
(WiP)
Last edited by a moderator: